Wednesday, 24 August 2011

Review: Brazil Flavour at Whitecross Street Market EC1

In many ways I wish I worked in our City office more despite the nightmare commute. Shoreditch is right around the corner with its eclectic collection of bars and nightlife and the great Vietnamese places on Kingsland Road are not much further.

One of the main rewards of schlepping through the hordes of people is the opportunity to peruse the delights of Whitecross Street Market. This is the kind of food market that anyone would want 100 yards from your office and given its location between Moorgate, Old Street and Barbican it can get rammed by 1pm with queues of around 20 minutes for the popular Burrito stall Luardos.

With that in mind you can imagine my horror at having a 30 minute lunch window imposed by inconsiderate organisers of conference calls. I was compelled to seek out a stall that had little to no queue - not normally a good sign but in this case I will put it down to the inability of most people to pronounce what was being sold.

Brazil Flavour do sell sandwiches but I was there for the Feijoada - the national dish of Brazil. Feijoada is a stew of black beans, and smoked meat - often served with rice and toasted cassava flour (farofa). This is a culinary cousin of a cassoulet - cooked low and slow over several hours so the meat falls apart and the flavours intermingle into rich, smoky and porky comfort food.

I can understand why the Portuguese-speaking world roll this out for weekend family lunches. This example included Chorizo as its primary meat component however I think there may have been some pork hiding in there as well.

I've never eaten this in Brazil or Portugal but have sampled what I think is a good one at Canela in Covent Garden. This compares very well and for £4.50 is an absolute bargain - albeit one I shouldn't have eaten on a steaming-hot day before a 2 hour meeting!